The WP Butler blog

Routine updates have always been available through The WP Butler, whether that’s weekly, twice weekly or thrice weekly. However, when a plugin or WordPress has a security vulnerability that gets patched, you want that update applied to your site as soon as possible, because the exploit has been made public so hackers are now in a position to take advantage of it.

WordPress has had a good resource for a while now which records when security vulnerabilities are identified and patched, called the WPScan Vulnerability Database. [Read more…] about Daily vulnerability updates, included free in every plan

It’s something that’s been pounded into our heads for years, but it’s hard to take heed of advice when it makes your life so burdensome. So how exactly do you keep your online life as secure as possible without going nuts?

Well, in the last year or so, I’ve really beefed up my online security, but not at the expense of convenience. So here’s how I did it. This is by no means the bible on online security, but it’s an excellent start. You may not want to do everything here, but even if you do some of it, you’ll be making headway towards better keeping your data secure.

Passwords, passwords, passwords

Passwords are generally a bad means of securing anything, because you’re trying to create something random and complex that your brain can remember, but that is strong enough to prevent ever-more-powerful computers to crack. It’s a battle that we will eventually lose, but for now, they need to be managed. [Read more…] about Maintain strong security online without pulling your hair out

If you are looking to outsource the maintenance of your client sites so that you can focus on development and growing your own business, The WP Butler can provide an easy, mutually beneficial, hands-off maintenance service for as few or as many sites as you need.

You simply choose the maintenance plan that is right for your clients and you’ll automatically receive a discount depending on the number of sites that you sign up for.

You can either provide a common service to all of your clients, or let your clients choose from our maintenance plans based on what their own needs are. Since you are in charge of the billing for each one, you can upgrade, downgrade and cancel as necessary.

To maintain the relationships with your clients, you act as the point of contact between your clients and us, so we only take action on requests that come from you.

You are then free to charge your clients whatever you like, in whatever manner you please. We would suggest using my standard pricing as a starting point, so that you’d be “earning” the discount provided to you by us on each client, but it’s certainly your prerogative to charge more or less than that.

Outsource your maintenance today

Everyone wants to keep their WordPress install secure and judging by the number of posts about WordPress security, you’d think that it’s quite an advanced topic.

The fact of the matter is that it’s not: out of the box, WordPress is extremely secure. It’s bad practices from there that start to make WordPress insecure.

In fact, most security issues can be solved with a single word: updates. [Read more…] about The key to keeping WordPress secure

Have you ever accidentally deleted a file or folder on your computer? More than likely I’d bet. Fortunately, you’re saved by the fact that computers have Recycle bins. Web servers: not so much. If you delete something, it’s much more difficult to retrieve.

If you get into the groove of doing work on your server, you can quite easily delete your backups without even thinking, by forgetting that they’re contained within a particular folder that seems innocent enough to delete.

This is where off-site backups come in. Aside from not putting all of your eggs in one basket (one point of failure), having a write-only off-site location where you’re sending your backups enables you to rest in the knowledge that there’s always a recent copy of your site away from where you would ever be messing around with files. [Read more…] about Why off-site backups are so important